Member Spotlights

To highlight the awesome activities (research, teaching, outreach, etc.) of our members we have member spotlights that rotate periodically. If you think an ESWN member is deserving of being highlighted in this way, please let us know (email Becca). We will ask you for a brief blurb of why said member is so great and then contact them to get photos (and make sure they want to be highlighted on our site).

Dr. Cynthia Dinwiddie is an environmental, earth and planetary scientist specializing in hydrogeology. Cynthia earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Walla Walla College with a concentration in mechanical engineering and she minored in mathematics before switching her focus to earth and environmental science in graduate school. Her mechanical… Read more

Nancy Soontiens’s research covers a variety of scales in the dynamics of the oceans, atmosphere and lakes. One of her focuses is to understand how small-scale processes like internal waves and mixing should be represented in numerical models and large-scale simulations. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at Environment and Climate Change Canada working on an algal… Read more

Dr. Elizabeth Dahl is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Loyola University Maryland, located in Baltimore Maryland. She received her BS from the University of Miami in Marine Science and Chemistry and her MS and PhD in Earth System Science from the University of California Irvine. Her research focuses on… Read more

Amy Myrbo, Ph.D., is a lake sediment researcher specializing in biogeochemistry and sedimentology. She is a Research Associate and Director of Outreach, Diversity, and Education at LacCore, the National Lacustrine Core Facility, in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation research examined the carbon cycle… Read more

Donna Charlevoix is the Director of Education and Community Engagement for UNAVCO, a science facility of the National Science Foundation. Her work is primarily centered on management and administration at an NSF science facility supporting geophysics and geodesy. She oversees a portfolio of activities that help scientists and the public… Read more

Ester Sztein has a career path that spans interdisciplinary and international boundaries. It is a path filled with opportunities to foster connections and strengthen the networks that advance science and scientists. Ester currently serves as Assistant Director of the Board on International Organizations (BISO) and Deputy Director of the Board… Read more

Dr. Claire Griffin is a postdoc in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. Her research addresses the fate of terrestrial materials, such as organic matter and nutrients, in aquatic and estuarine environments. As an undergraduate at Clark University (2010), she had the opportunity to travel to northeast… Read more

Susan Gichuki’s interest in science has always been driven by curiosity, the innate desire to know how things work. In addition to having good teachers and parents who nurtured this interest, growing up she was a voracious reader. An array of fiction and books like Arkady Leokum’s “Tell Me Why”… Read more

Dr. Attreyee Ghosh is a solid earth geophysicist interested in the dynamics of the deep Earth and how that relates to surface tectonics. Her curiosity for this particular field was fueled when she enrolled in a Plate Tectonics course, while a graduate student at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia… Read more

Following her career as an environmental engineer that included a season in Antarctica, Lois Wardell began a research career that first concentrated on secondary metabolites from exotic marine species (NASA Exobiology Fellowship, Univ. of Mississippi). However, after falling in love with Antarctica, she ended up doing doctoral work on Mt… Read more

For 18 years, Valery Terwilliger was an assistant and then associate professor in the now Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science at the University of Kansas, where she also held courtesy or affiliate appointments in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department and its Latin American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Quaternary… Read more

Sora Kim is interested in the interaction between ecology and environment, especially during periods of climate change. Her primary tool is stable isotope analysis, which allows her to work within and among various disciplines such as paleontology, geochemistry, oceanography, and physiology. She has always found roots in geoscience. She did… Read more

Kristan Culbert currently works as a Biological Science Technician for the National Park Service at Manassas National Battlefield Park. She manages all GIS data for the park’s Resources Management division, provides GIS assistance to other departments as needed, and is currently developing watershed assessments/enhancement plans and GIS-focused educational materials for the park. She… Read more

Jennifer Palmer is a wildlife biologist, conservation scientist, youth mentor, world explorer, and nature enthusiast. For over 15 years, she has devoted her career to the plight of wildlife and launched Women for Wildlife (website and Facebook page) with the deep belief that the solutions to our greatest wildlife challenges are… Read more

Susan Cheng is an ecosystem ecologist and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. She received her BA in Environmental Science at Columbia University, and worked in environmental consulting and environmental education at Cornell University Cooperative Extension in NYC before starting grad… Read more

Aparna Bamzai serves as the University Assistant Director for the South Central Climate Science Center hosted at the University of Oklahoma. Established in 2012 by the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Center provides decision makers in the region with the science, tools, and information they need to address the… Read more

Dr. Raquel Azevedo Silva recently earned her PhD in Environmental Sciences and Engineering at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her doctoral research on climate change, air quality, and human health was focused on quantifying the global mortality impacts of ambient air pollution. Originally from Portugal, Raquel came… Read more

Melissa Burt is Education and Diversity Manager for the NSF Science and Technology Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMMAP) in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. In this position she is developing programs to enhance understanding of global climate through K-12, undergraduate, and graduate study… Read more

In September of 2015, Dr. Anna Åkesson received her PhD in Hydraulic and Hydrologic Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Anna received her MSc in Environmental Engineering from Lund University, and did her MSc Thesis as a Minor Field Study in Mozambique, with a scholarship from the… Read more

Sarah Anderson is currently working toward her PhD studying sources of atmospheric nitrogen deposition. Her dissertation combines stable isotope analyses, atmospheric modeling, and biological indicators to study how sources of nitrogen deposition change over different time scales. She is pulling from archives of both precipitation samples and samples of biological… Read more

Dr. Subhashree (Shree) Mishra is an Atmospheric Scientist working at the intersection of science and society. She is an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow working for the SunShot Initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy, Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO). The Sunshot Initiative was launched in 2011, with an… Read more

Dr. Alicia Cruz-Uribe is starting as the Edward Sturgis Grew Assistant Professor of Petrology and Mineralogy in the School of Earth and Climate Science at the University of Maine in August (congratulations!). She is currently a postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution working in the experimental petrology lab. One of the… Read more

Dr. Laura Guertin is a professor of Earth Science at Penn State Brandywine, located right outside of Philadelphia in Media, Pennsylvania. She received her BA in geology from Bucknell University and her PhD in marine geology & geophysics from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.… Read more

Dr. Michèle LaVigne is an Assistant Professor of Earth and Oceanographic Science at Bowdoin College. In the words of some of her students, she is an “excellent professor who prioritizes teaching and mentoring while also conducting new and exciting research. She has a great sense of humor and a calming… Read more

Dr. Aradhna Tripati, an Assistant Professor at UCLA, is a leader in the fields of paleoclimatology and stable isotope geochemistry, and runs one of the few labs capable of measuring clumped isotopes. She has published in Nature, Science, and PNAS as well as a host of other prestigious journals, promoting the… Read more

Joke Lübbecke is a Junior Professor for Physical Oceanography at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. Her research is focused on interannual to decadal tropical ocean-atmosphere variability. For example, she is trying to better understand the mechanisms that control the strength and frequency of sea surface… Read more

Rachel Licker is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Princeton University’s Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She received her Ph.D. in Environment and Resources with the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) in the Nelson Institute for… Read more

Dr. Corinne Wong’s research focuses on reconstructing past climate variability from environmental proxies archived in the geologic record. In particular, she uses speleothems (cave mineral deposits) to interpret past variability in precipitation to provide a baseline for assessing climate change impacts on hydroclimate. Her work in cave environments is important… Read more

Dr. Aomawa Shields is an Astronomer and Astrobiologist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of California, Los Angeles and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She was awarded a National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship and a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Program Fellowship beginning… Read more

Maria Val Martin is a lecturer in Environmental Protection at the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department of Sheffield University (UK). Maria received her undergraduate degree in Agriculture Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica of Valencia, Spain, and MS and PhD degrees in Environmental Engineering from Michigan Technological University, United States. In 2007,… Read more

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is an Associate Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry in the Life and Environmental Sciences unit at the University of California, Merced. Asmeret’s research interests lie at the interface of soil science and global change science. Asmeret studies the role of the soil system (the pedosphere) in climate and… Read more

Dr. Delores “D.” Robinson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alabama. She studies how mountain belts evolve in different tectonic environments from colliding plates to mature ranges by combining tectonics, structural geology, geochemistry, geochronology, sedimentology, petrology, and field mapping data. Much of… Read more

Amélie Kirchgaessner works as a Climate Scientist at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. She uses observational and modeling data to study how meteorological processes affect, and are affected by large-scale climate change. She is involved in projects that look at microphysical properties of clouds in polar regions and… Read more

Mona Behl works as a research coordinator with Texas Sea Grant College Program headquartered at Texas A&M University. In this position she leads the Sea Grant’s research program which includes managing a portfolio of grants, fellowships, and scholarships, overseeing and monitoring funded research, facilitating information exchange between research and extension,… Read more

Carrie is currently leading the Science and Analysis team at The Freshwater Trust, which is pioneering the next generation of conservation by shifting from process-based restoration to outcome-based restoration. Like all conservation groups, they traditionally evaluated and reported on projects in terms of dollars spent, trees planted, gallons of water… Read more

How did life on Earth begin? It is one of the biggest questions that scientists are still asking. ESWN member Jill McDermott is one of the scientists asking that question. Jill, along with her colleagues, Eoghan Reeves and Jeff Seewald, are the first to test a fundamental assumption of the… Read more

Raluca Ellis joined ESWN while completing her graduate studies, and actively participates in group discussions and ESWN activities. Raluca is very passionate about science communication and outreach, especially to young girls. Together with her friends and artist husband, Raluca has created many videos that entertain and educate. She has worked… Read more

Dr. Amy Keesee is a Research Assistant Professor at West Virginia University. She is a plasma physicist, studying the Earth’s magnetosphere. She wrote an article on fusion energy that appears in the current issue of AWIS Magazine. If you are not a member of the Association for Women in Science you can download… Read more

Kerri is passionate about the Arctic, where climate change is occurring most rapidly. She recently published a study in Nature Geoscience showing that the surface snowpack is a major source of atmospheric bromine in the Arctic springtime following polar sunrise. The results of this study are important because they point to atmospheric chemistry… Read more

Anne is a hydrologist at Kent State University. For years now Anne has been very involved in the science blogging community. Anne is passionate about making science information accessible to the general public so that they can make more informed decisions. She also interacts with many science journalists through her blog… Read more

Skylar Bayer is in her second year of her Ph.D. in Marine Biology in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. Her work focuses on the reproductive ecology of invertebrates, particularly that of the scallop fishery. She collaborates with Maine fishermen to help. Since her undergraduate years… Read more

Striving to understand – by going to sea, conducting tank experiments, and running numerical models – what makes the ocean move. Passionate about discussing ocean and climate issues with colleagues, students and the general public. Trying to inspire to make a difference.Mirjam Sophia Glessmer joined the ESWN in 2006, the… Read more

ESWN Founding member and Leadership Board member Christine Wiedinmyer was awarded the UCAR Diversity Award in 2011 for her innovative and continuing activities to reduce obstacles and enhance opportunities for women and other underrepresented groups in the geosciences. To quote one letter of support of the award: “Christine has become almost… Read more